CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - Fragile Things ..
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One of them is going to betray me tonight, as I am sure you could already sense so yourself — that was just how easily Daphne had managed to get Coriolanus feeling as if he had been tossed right into a bowl of boiling water from the moment they left the bunker. He could no longer even appreciate the much awaited nocturnal glimpses at District 2's industrialized town center, because his heart was thudding in his chest a pulse which deafened all of his senses save for one: the gun he had up until then forgotten he was even carrying inside his suit jacket had abruptly turned heavy again, nudging him uncomfortably in the ribs with bruises reeking of responsibility at every step taken besides Daphne, with Thaddeus behind them.
This was most definitely the first time Coriolanus had come close to objecting over Thaddeus choosing to give the two of them some space. Had it not been for a last strand of pride regulating him into distinguishing between necessity and pitiful behavior, he would have asked rather promptly before he allowed himself to enter that local pub arm in arm with Daphne why Thaddeus can't be joining them too, given the less than favorable situation.
Daphne was acting, much to his distress, as if an attempt on her life was indeed something that had happened so often it became downright boring and banal to even acknowledge it as a danger anymore.
What puzzled Coriolanus even more than her abrupt rise of recklessness was however the fact that he was supposed to know who the traitor was already — He didn't know these people!
Upon entering that dark place with too few and too pale yellow lights to distinguish luminescence past the clouds of smoke and dust lingering in the air, his eyes scanned not merely scientists, but strangers; all of Daphne's co-workers looked suspicious to him, even in an environment where the old music player in the corner was trying its best to lighten up the atmosphere for everyone, not just those engaged in conversation, laughing, drinking or all of the above.
Goodness, Coriolanus couldn't even understand why they had answered the celebration invitation to begin with. Why were they out in the open like that? He failed to recall if he had seen any District people out after curfew on the street, but surely this was a security risk to the project even without everyone in town out and about.
To have a whole bar overtaken by people in white lab coats was most definitely a dangerous gamble to allow and had he been Daphne, he would have insisted the celebration happen in the bunker, if it should happen at all — that pristine white of their coats didn't change who they were in the slightest, not to him. He prayed Daphne hadn't forgotten their nature either.
"Two of whatever everyone's having," Daphne smiled brightly at one of her colleagues who had taken it upon himself to be the bartender. If she had noticed Coriolanus' growing tension at all, she was adamant on ignoring it entirely, especially now as it grew exponentially around a premise of confusion — she wasn't a drinker.
"Coming right up, ma'am!"
"Miss Ravinstill," Dr. Birches approached, making Coriolanus flinch. His right hand had twitched closer to his jacket's lining, but he clenched it in a fist before it could slide ever so slightly underneath. He's long since realized that Dr. Birches and Dr. Watt were the only two scientists on Daphne's team that he knew by name and given this woman with hair as coarse as wool had had her arguments with Daphne before the test, she was a prime suspect — still, grasping his pistol felt awfully exaggerate, especially as, looking back over his shoulder, he noticed the woman was holding only a napkin, over which she scribbled some calculations.
"Let me guess," Daphne turned her attention to the woman and gave her a smile far too real for Coriolanus not to immediately flatten his palm back on the counter's surface — this wasn't the smile one could give to a threat, no matter how skilled at faking it. "The decay rate's been bothering you?"
"We cut it in too short with this one," Dr. Birches passed the napkin to Daphne.
"It's been bothering me too," she admitted in return, eyes glazing quickly over her much older colleague's Mathematics.
While she studied the results, Birches met Coriolanus' cold glare, hardened by the fact that she hadn't actually noticed him until that very moment. This shouldn't be happening, Coriolanus couldn't help but think. District people shouldn't be able to ignore a Snow like this. Much as pride burned in his veins, he knew he had no fame to himself and given the work ethic he knew Daphne to have, he doubted any of these scientists had had the time to see him on TV next to Lucy Gray. Therefore, with a strain and a sigh, Coriolanus extended his hand towards Dr. Birches, "Coriolanus Snow."
"Snow?" The woman took a step closer. "Goodness," her eyes went wide. "You do look like him now that I think about it. I worked with your father— Well," she stopped to correct herself, "technically for him, in the end. Nuclear physicist, Cornelia Birches." Alas, she took his hand and gave it a firm shake.
"It wasn't at full power," Daphne gasped, stopping thus Coriolanus from inquiring any further in Dr. Birches' origins which were at the very least peculiar, if not downright intriguing in their allusion at how she might have originally been a District 13 resident who was not there for the bombing.
"I told you," Dr. Birches let go of Snow's hand and turned to Daphne once more. "The element was a lot more reactive than you anticipated and the explosion should have by all means been much bigger. However, both us and Galvan have underestimated just how high the decaying rate would be."
"We can fix this," Daphne looked up from the napkin, the tension in her shoulders keeping back her urge to tear that thing to pieces for being that fragile barrier of truth between her and fully escaping the haunting equations of Phase 1. Now that she tasted the relief of living without the obsession, she craved the freedom beyond it.
"We can," Dr. Birches nodded. "Which is why I wasn't going to come to you with this tonight, or at all. My plan was to solve this quietly until I heard Konstanz boasting about the test sample of the synthesized element that Galvan asked be stored in containers at K-34. The element is too unpredictable to be stored like that."
Daphne shook her head, trying hard not to give voice to a bigger chunk of her indignation than necessary, "I didn't give that order."
Birches, much like Coriolanus, had no trouble noticing the anger harboring behind Daphne's eyes, yet unlike him, she could not have even hoped to glimpse at the disaster waiting to happen, approaching her from behind.
Everything crammed within a second — Coriolanus' hand sliding under his jacket until his fingertips grazed the foreign cold handle of a pistol he wasn't even sure how to use, Daphne tugging on his sleeve to still him from gripping the gun while she herself took a step between her honored guest and her threatened colleague, and Dr. Galvan Watt's cutlery pressing into Birches' throat.
In a normal society, no one should feel threatened by a fork, but this was no normal world and Daphne was a child of war, meaning she knew better than to underestimate the human talent of furbishing deadly weapons out of anything; deep in all their veins ran the genes of hunters, of warriors who, with only sticks and stones, claimed the top of the food chain.
Only feeling Coriolanus struggle to reach for the gun made Daphne remind herself to lift her gaze off the spikes of that fork curving into Birches' pulse. "I take you realized you need new codes for a second launch," she lifted her chin.
That's what Thaddeus got done for her during our talk at the bunker, Coriolanus pieced it together, his eyebrows shutting upward, though he remained puzzled if he should admire or shun Daphne's show off of complete recklessness.
"And you're going to give them to me," Galvan glared.
"Will I?" Daphne kept her composure. "Or you're kill Birches, right? One life in exchange for a weapon you will use on the Capitol. Hardly a fair trade when you take into consideration what every single rebel before you failed to anticipate." She steadied herself, letting go of Coriolanus' sleeve so both her hands may join behind her back for a breathing moment in which her eyes took in the rest of the small pub. This was the moment she was risking it all for, the few seconds in which she had the time to assess the reactions of about a dozen people and see who didn't look shocked about this turn of events, or rather who, in her absence from the direct leadership of the program, have been swept under Dr. Watt's influence. She had the certainty of proof that he'd associated himself with known relatives of rebels still on the loose, but no way to guess just how far into her small work environment his poison had spread.
"Without the Capitol," Daphne continued with a sigh, "the Districts will merely fall into civil wa—" On the brink of taking a step forward, Daphne had been frozen in her tracks by a gruesome and unexpected sight: Dr. Watt stabbed the fork into Dr. Birches throat.
The woman's eyes gauged in terror.
Much as she wished to look away before that image of deadly pain burned itself on her mind, Daphne had no such luck: her eyes were trapped in a trance, watching life leave Dr. Birches'.
Coriolanus welcomed a different sort of sight of horror, one filled with murderous intent, the sort he had been terrified of since the dark days of the war, when cannibalism happened in the streets and the world had briefly been cleared of any and all humanity. He stood witness to Dr. Watt's plethora of emotions, going from a frenzy of anger, to the pits of panic and up the steep climb of rush where the beast of madness asked for the second victim — he had his Daphne within sight.
She had been so stupid to bring them there, to underestimate the enemy that lies within all these District folk, but there was no point to scolding her now.
Coriolanus' priorities changed and within the blink of an eye, he let go of the attempt to grab the pistol in order to instead take hold of Daphne's hand and pull her away from Watt's path.
He hadn't exactly expected for her to have grown this numb in the span of seconds since blood poured out of a gashing wound on Birches' neck and though he didn't mean to throw her off balance by getting her out of danger's way, that's exactly what he managed to do.
Daphne stumbled to the side, falling over a stool. Her head must have hit the edge of the counter before she hit the ground, because by the time she tried to make sense of her surroundings again, all she could really feel was how a pulsing headache was rippling her vision into blurs. Her hearing wasn't helping either, supplementing to the overall confusion by coating every single sound of her environment into heavy diffusion and a curtain of the usual ear ringing, returned ten fold.
There were several glimpses she managed to make out from this mess, all of which only confirmed to Daphne that she should try by all means to get up despite every wave of pain that overwhelmed her with the desire to pin her to the ground.
First there was Birches' body, still convulsing, eyes seeking Daphne's — she knew that had her stomach actually not been empty, she would have felt sick enough to puke it clean and thin, until her throat burned as much as her head.
Second came the sight of two smoke bombs rolling in — from the corner of her eyes she spotted movement at the door, though she couldn't tell if those were the Peacekeepers Thaddeus had assembled according to plan barging in for the extraction, or colleagues who recognized the smoke bombs' emanating gas did not look, nor smell right. By the time she could make up her mind on which of the two things were happening, the third image captured Daphne's fragmented attention to her right.
Watt had Coriolanus pushed into the bar. Frantic punches were thrown from the latter, aimlessly striking lucky blows until the fork fell out of Watt's grip, striking the floor with a clicking sound that escaped Daphne's understanding entirely.
This fortunate disarming was quick to turn unfortunate for Coriolanus and though Daphne's headache made time seem like it had slowed down, she could swear the moment Coriolanus was punched across the face happened so fast her reason had not checked in just yet and she opened her mouth to scream. A mouthful of the gas got inhaled and her blurred vision grew spotty with shadows instantly.
Between the closing edges of a darkening vision, she saw a fine line of blood touch down on Coriolanus' bottom lip, sight a second away from witnessing Thaddeus' rough hands press in on both sides of Watt's head.
Though she didn't hear much, Daphne heard the crack of Galvan Watt's neck and she mourned a second for the two most fragile things — the neck and the mind of an easily persuaded man.
"Coryo," she felt her lips moving with his name upon them, but hearing had abandoned her entirely now, dragging her sight along so that she could neither hear if he was alright, nor see it for herself. Daphne wanted to sit up, to follow the plan and bring something to her nose so she stopped inhaling that darn thing, but she has already drawn too much in her lungs and now, the ground bathed with Dr. Birches' blood seemed comfortable, like her mother's nightgown, inviting her in to sleep surrounded by a sweet scent of cherries. At least she could still smell the cherries.
He heard her calling his name, but having that sound as a motivation to resist the urge to slide further into slumber had only opened Coriolanus' eyes to a blurred image. Things have escalated so fast that he didn't know why he tasted iron on his lips or why a simple brawl had taken from him all sense of his surroundings too. Only focusing himself on what he could comprehend wasn't that good of a choice either, because though he thought he glimpsed at someone stepping over the two corpses to pick Daphne up from the ground, there was no strength left in Coriolanus to appeal to and object to her being taken away, flung over some stranger's shoulder.
Little did he know, he was going to be given the same treatment after one masked individual he hadn't even seen approach pointed a flashlight right in his face to force him to blink or flinch at the very least, show some instinctual sign of life.
"You're alright," Thaddeus mumbled in what Daphne could only appreciate to have been his reassurance to himself, rather than towards her, as he held up the mask to her face and the back of her head in the palm of his hand so she wouldn't fall back. "Take deep breaths, kiddo."
She never liked him calling her that for it always managed to remind her that for a while, with her father off to war and her brother viciously writing himself as her worst nightmare even when compared to her hearing affliction, she had been childish enough to think Thaddeus was there to be her new father. Daphne had to learn fast she couldn't cling to men paid to be by her side, much as it was tempting — money could buy everything save for trust, she would tell herself that while her life fell in the palm of his hands for the hundreth time and those hands, though they could break someone's neck, held her gently, despite the certainty that should his touch harden, there was no one in power who'd care enough about this fiery lady to tell him off.
No sooner than four deep inhales later, Daphne started seeing and hearing enough to have all the reason to push the mask off her face and force herself to look back towards the bar. The intervention team assembled through Thaddeus and Officer Cress occupied the whole street before the bar, surrounding it with weapons at the ready for any escapees or curfew-breaking onlookers.
"He's right there," Thaddeus blocked Daphne's line of view towards the door of the pub in order to redirect her sight to her right. Following the direction in which he pointed, she finally caught sight of Coriolanus, being given the same treatment as her, just a little further away. His eyes met hers and his hand twitched to lift.
"Help me up," Daphne muttered before abruptly realizing how sore her throat has gotten over this endeavor.
Thaddeus was prompt in getting up and helping her stand along with him, offering his arm as a discreet aid for her to walk towards the still masked Officer and the one other Peacekeeper making sure Coriolanus didn't get to feel the full paralysis effects of the gas.
As soon as Cress saw Daphne, he removed his full face helmet, nodded at her, then set it aside, on the open trunk, near Coriolanus. The Officer returned to facing Daphne only to pass onto her a register with one single page and a pen attached to it. "We should finish this fast."
"Agreed," Daphne took the pen and circled without as much as batting an eye four names. "Everyone else," she handed the list back to Cress and stole a glance at the bar, "is a traitor to the state, Officer."
"Permission to make an example out of Dr. Galvan Watt?"
"I don't interfere with Peacekeeper business," Daphne responded, uninterested in what the Officer actually meant by that. "Do what must be done."
Officer Cress nodded appreciatively, a gesture to herald that, at long last, Daphne could nudge that helmet aside and sit alone with Coriolanus for a second.
"I shouldn't have let you go with me in there," she admitted after a short moment of silence, barely holding her voice's integrity together while what little she saw of the altercation between her dear Coryo and Dr. Watt left her heart in shambles and her lungs devoid of air. "I'm sorry."
Coriolanus moved his hand over her own, giving it a soft squeeze as he sighed, "I would much rather have you promise me you won't be this careless with your life again, Daffy." He watched her eyes descend their gaze upon their hands; nothing about her expression could be read into, which was a frightening sight of numbness, albeit not one he did not expect to see. He had to look away. "Not because I wouldn't risk my life to help you or I wouldn't fulfill your wish that in a world without you, I finish what you started, but rather because, to me, that world in which you are gone is Hell and seeing you in danger is a torture reaching out from the Pits to hurt me."
Loves makes people weak, Daphne told herself as her head bowed in acknowledgement that she was in fact inclined to listen to his beseeching first and her reason second.
"I had to see who Watt had turned against my cause," she justified herself with no avail. "This project isn't a safe endeavor, Coryo," she added, with Birches' dead eyes appearing on her mind and thus forcing her to hold on tighter onto Coriolanus' hand.
You found the worst time to tell her these things, Coriolanus faced the scolding of his own mind as he finally had his eyes pried away from the scene of one masked Peacekeeper dragging out Watt's corpse, the only dead body to be salvaged from the building after the four scientists Daphne had circled the name of were rescued. At first, he looked down at their hands once again, finally realizing she was ever so slightly shivering. A chill went through his body too, recalling all too well how much of a mess he had been after he had watched life leave Arachne, right before his eyes. Finally, he looked up at Daphne's face, seeking to meet her gaze.
"Are you alright?" He inquired after a long pause that she hadn't even registered.
"I think I should stay here," Daphne continued staring down at the fixed point she had found on the ground. It wasn't exactly that she hadn't heard his question, but rather that she chose to ignore it — 'alright' was a state for those whose plans hadn't claimed unexpected collateral damage. "Just another day," she affirmed with a short nod of her own. "With the Games tomorrow, my father won't notice I'm not there."
The Games, Coriolanus had forgotten all about the late hour and how he was supposed to be in pristine shape at sunrise in order to start his Mentoring job.
"I need to solve the problem Dr. Birches—" Daphne didn't expect to choke on that name and have it stuck in her throat with a returning image of blood bursting out of that woman's neck. She has a son, the masochistic part of her brain reminded her and thus twisted the knife a little deeper in her cold heart. The thing about cold hearts no one told the unfortunate souls who chose this path for themselves as a form of protection was that ice breaks and frozen tissue tears like no other.
"You don't have to stay here to solve it," Coriolanus pulled her hand onto his thigh the second he noticed her gaze getting lost even further. Don't go there, this gesture begged on his behalf. Don't hide away from me. I can be there for you.
"I don't want to go home with a half victory," she mumbled, lifting her gaze to the bursting fire started inside the pub, engulfing the unconscious bodies of the traitors. With flames reflected in her eyes and shining over her hair an illusion of undulating motion, she found the strength to bring a smile back to her lips — there was no way Coriolanus could persuade her to reconsider, and he knew it. "I'll be back in the Capitol in the evening and swing by your place in the morning—"
"I'll wait for you in the evening," Coriolanus interrupted her.
"You're going to be neck deep in Mentor duties in a couple of hours, dummy. I think you should rather aim to sleep."
"I can sleep on the road back to the Capitol," he claimed, though he knew that the bumpy ride was sooner going to accentuate all his bruises and new aches rather than help him fall asleep. "You know I would have much rather stayed here with you, crazy as it is to begin with, had it not—"
"Had it not been for your Lucy Gray," Daphne interrupted, that name still bitter on her tongue.
"For the money prize," Coriolanus corrected her, his free hand finally reaching out to grab onto her chin and turn her to face him.
It was for things like this that Daphne needed to stay in District 2 another day and reconsider what being so undeniably in love actually entailed in terms of new backup plans to solidify her vision's guarantee forward — people don't plan on love and certainly, she hadn't either, though everything they've done these past years seemed to have led exactly to this attraction, to this binding of weakness between them.
Coriolanus stole a kiss from her lips and she tasted his blood, slipping on her tongue in a moment over before she could even properly savour it.
"I'll wait for you," he smiled.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE :
Daphne's first traumatic brush with what happens when she doesn't see and prepare for *everything* that can go wrong. 😭 ( this will have consequences and will make her extra paranoid )
Also, small moment of appreciation for Coriolanus and Thaddeus smoothly starting to get along better 😩✨️
Can't remember if I showed this to y'all but since I have nothing more to say about this chapter ( I could talk hours about all the foreshadowing and important developments this chapter entails, but I don't wanna bore y'all ), moodboard time ~